Your Friday Morning Roundup

Well, winning the Super Bowl was fun. Because it appears the Super Bowl high that the Sixers and Flyers got appears to be over:

The Sixers looked to get revenge from last week’s one-point loss to the Miami Heat in South Beach. They didn’t.

Instead, they lost again by nine. And it was an important game for both teams. With the season series split at two games apiece, the tiebreaker if needed would go to conference record. Currently, the Heat would win that tiebreaker with a 24-18 record compared to the Sixers’ 21-17 mark.

The turning point would be a big fourth quarter for the Heat. Miami went 13 for 18 on field goal attempts and five for six from the three-point line. That was much more efficient than Philly’s seven makes out of 22 attempts.

Embiid didn’t look good for most of the game. Maybe he was right in regards to having a bad stretch?

The Sixers begin a relatively easier seven-game stretch Sunday night in Brooklyn against the Nets. Tip off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. In that stretch, they take on only one current playoff team in Indiana on Tuesday night at home. A home meeting with Brooklyn, along with games against New York, Charlotte, Memphis, and Orlando fill that stretch.

Let’s take a look back at our predictions from earlier in the season. Most of us had them making the playoffs.

On the ice, things haven’t looked good for the Flyers. Ever since the calendar turned to March, the Flyers have gotten only one point out of a possible eight.

You can make that one point out of a possible 10, thanks to a late 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins in Beantown, one night after falling to archrival Pittsburgh. Jake Voracek and Jori Lehtera (!) scored the pair of Flyers goals before heading to the third period, where it was still tied at two until Brad Marchand knocked home a rebound on the far side of the net with 22 seconds left.

Alex Lyon made 24 saves on 27 shots in his first start since the Petr Mrazek trade. He looked pretty solid on the night.

Probably the best thing to come out of the loss was this unbelievable no-look between-the-legs pass by Nolan Patrick on the power play to Jake Voracek:

A player who isn’t quite what he was and picked his spots more than he has in the past, according to the three offensive coaches I asked about him. He was also a pain in the ass for the Seattle coaches. The good news? With the depth of the Eagles defensive line, Bennett will be more of a spot player there, and Philly’s locker room, on paper, is a good fit.

In Spring Training action, the Phillies scored four runs in the sixth and two in the eighth to rally past the New York Yankees 7-6. Ryan Flaherty had two RBIs on the afternoon, while Ben Lively pitched four innings, giving up three runs on five hits with a strikeout and two walks.

Lively has pitched well this spring, looking more mature than the pitcher who made 15 major-league starts last season. One rough inning against one of baseball’s best lineups won’t spoil that.

“A couple of those four seamers came back, and they barreled it,” Lively said. “Can’t do anything about that. Two pitches. That’s baseball.”

Eflin is finally recovered from the pair of knee surgeries he underwent at the end of the 2016 season. He has looked strong this spring, and manager Gabe Kapler said Eflin “came out looking beautifully” after his simulated game on Tuesday. He has more life on his fastball and has the attraction of the unknown. How good could the former first-round pick be now that he’s fully healthy? The Phillies still have three weeks to figure that out.

“I think they both responded to competition … beautifully,” Kapler said. “We never said like, ‘You guys are competing for a fifth spot in the rotation.’ That’s more external. Internally, you guys are competing, and that’s it. They’ve both competed beautifully.”

In college hoops, Villanova pulled away from Marquette with a 94-70 win in the Big East quarterfinals. They’ll take on No. 6 seed Butler tonight at 9 PM on FS1 in the semifinals. Butler has defeated Villanova in both meetings this season.

In the first round of the AAC tournament, Temple defeated Tulane 82-77 to advance to tonight’s quarterfinal showdown with Wichita State at 7 PM on ESPNU.

This afternoon, St. Joe’s kicks off their run in the A-10 tournament with George Mason in the quarterfinals at 2:30 PM on NBCSN. Penn plays Yale tomorrow at 3 PM in the Ivy League semifinals at the Palestra.

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Chris is the Morning Roundup writer on Crossing Broad. He recently graduated from Syracuse University and was the video coordinator for the men's lacrosse team. He's previously covered the Philadelphia Eagles for Philadelphia Magazine’s Birds 24/7 and KYW Newsradio 1060. Chris is also a Production Assistant at ESPN and the Managing Editor for the college lacrosse website College Crosse.

6 Comments

Paul jolovitz fan club presidentMarch 9, 2018 at 9:23 am

So the Obamas are talking with Netflix about getting their own show. Trump is about to change the world by meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. And the left says he’s not a great president. Hahahaha. And they can’t figure out why they keep losing?

The GDP has been going up year over year for decades. Also the GDP is not the economy.
Crime – a slight decrease in some crimes and a slight increase in other crimes – no real change.
Isis – first, the goal of Trump was to eliminate terrorism, not Isis. Second – Isis is still very active. Take your own advice and google Isis.